Brooks: Comey ‘Passes the Smell Test, by and Large’

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks stated former FBI Director James Comey “passes the smell test, by and large.” Brooks also si that the portions of Comey’s book that he has read also pass the smell test.

Brooks said, “I think President Trump has done a pretty good job of confirming everything Comey said, by his tweets today. I mean, the word slimeball shouldn’t be coming out of the White House. You know, I think that it’s aptly titled. One of the things we see in this book is a guy who’s like, frankly, a lot of people who work in government in Washington as part of the career civil service, that their loyalty is not to red and blue.”

He added that Comey has “offended Democrats mightily. He’s offended the Republican president mightily. And I think he passes the smell test, by and large. And so, I think he’s honest that it could — it’s quite possible that Donald Trump didn’t do anything criminal here, but did do something mafioso-like. And that’s, frankly, not a completely new revelation.”

Brooks later stated, “I do think, in general, from what I’ve read of the book and the excerpts, it passes the smell test. One important moment for me was his description of his handling of the Clinton emails.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett